PvP Season 13 Titles

As most of you know, we decided to remove titles for Tournament Season 13. By the end of the season, we’d made the decision to restore titles for Season 14. Several players opened their Season 13 reward chests after we made the change for next season and ended up getting titles they didn’t expect. Rather than trying to remove those titles, we’ve decided the fairest action we can take is to go ahead and send out titles to everyone who would have earned one had titles been available the day the season ended.

You should see that title in the next couple of weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

tbh this is dumb, alot of ppl who wouldnt be on top250 or top100 or top25... are now in those places and will get those titles because it was alot easier to get there than the previous seasons because there was less people tryharding, so some will get ez good undeserved titles...

titles aren't even a big deal. If you honestly can't get some of the the titles that been around for over 6+ seasons and one of the many excuses is because you are "limited" to playing then Maybe Rank Spvp isn't for you. It's suppose to be something that ends up getting mainly grind out by playing over 15+ games a week(which comes down to about 2-3 games a every other day).

What Anet Needs to do Is Reward Different Sort of Skins for Each season. Hand Out a Skins for Gold + Players(Like LoL), Each Skin is Equally the same no matter what rank you are from Gold and Above, while still keeping titles around but changing them every few seasons to make them at least worth trying to really get. This Game Needs a Nice Source of "spice" to want to make Players ACTUALLY play better then what they are now, and Attract More players to have a "purpose" to come into the Spvp World to play rank besides to do dailies.

As most of you know, we decided to remove titles for Tournament Season 13. By the end of the season, we’d made the decision to restore titles for Season 14. Several players opened their Season 13 reward chests after we made the change for next season and ended up getting titles they didn’t expect. Rather than trying to remove those titles, we’ve decided the fairest action we can take is to go ahead and send out titles to everyone who would have earned one had titles been available the day the season ended.

You should see that title in the next couple of weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

This is by no means fair! No one should receive a title for season 13. You all stated titles would not be rewarded. I purposefully sat this season out since there were no good rewards. How can you change your mind after the season has ended???

As most of you know, we decided to remove titles for Tournament Season 13. By the end of the season, we’d made the decision to restore titles for Season 14. Several players opened their Season 13 reward chests after we made the change for next season and ended up getting titles they didn’t expect. Rather than trying to remove those titles, we’ve decided the fairest action we can take is to go ahead and send out titles to everyone who would have earned one had titles been available the day the season ended.

You should see that title in the next couple of weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

This is by no means fair! No one should receive a title for season 13. You all stated titles would not be rewarded. I purposefully sat this season out since there were no good rewards. How can you change your mind after the season has ended???

Moderator Note: Edited to remove comments in breach of the Forums Code of Conduct.

As most of you know, we decided to remove titles for Tournament Season 13. By the end of the season, we’d made the decision to restore titles for Season 14. Several players opened their Season 13 reward chests after we made the change for next season and ended up getting titles they didn’t expect. Rather than trying to remove those titles, we’ve decided the fairest action we can take is to go ahead and send out titles to everyone who would have earned one had titles been available the day the season ended.

You should see that title in the next couple of weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

This is by no means fair! No one should receive a title for season 13. You all stated titles would not be rewarded. I purposefully sat this season out since there were no good rewards. How can you change your mind after the season has ended???

Moderator Note: Edited to remove comments in breach of the Forums Code of Conduct.

Your second line is really what has me mad - how title value diminishes. Since "I feel" less people competed this season, it was probably "easier" to get a title.

As most of you know, we decided to remove titles for Tournament Season 13. By the end of the season, we’d made the decision to restore titles for Season 14. Several players opened their Season 13 reward chests after we made the change for next season and ended up getting titles they didn’t expect. Rather than trying to remove those titles, we’ve decided the fairest action we can take is to go ahead and send out titles to everyone who would have earned one had titles been available the day the season ended.

You should see that title in the next couple of weeks, and we apologize for the confusion.

This is by no means fair! No one should receive a title for season 13. You all stated titles would not be rewarded. I purposefully sat this season out since there were no good rewards. How can you change your mind after the season has ended???

Moderator Note: Edited to remove comments in breach of the Forums Code of Conduct.

Moderator Note: Edited to remove comments in breach of the Forums Code of Conduct.

@dagger dave.5201 said:
Who cares about titles... like they actually mean anything, and you will get the title if your good enough next season so what's the issue?

The issue is that doing to real life stuff S13 would actually been the only season since a while that I could actually fully play, and they decided to give kitten rewards, but then you discover actually they decided to give the titles. "Ok wait I can understand, they decided it and told it before the start of the season? " "Ehm... no" "Oh, actually during the season, like mid season!?" "Ehm neither..." "Please tell me they haven't decided it once the season was over?" "Ehh..."

"issue is that doing to real life stuff s13 would actually been the only season since a while that I could actually fully play"

Welcome to the life of being a casual , I see why you felt trigger by my last comment/post. Don't worry Nuvola It's just a game, you got this season to try and get some more games in or just wait for another season to have the time for it! Rank isn't going anywhere I can assure you that .

I'm going to close this thread temporarily so that the moderators can clean up some posts that are seriously in breach of the Forums Code of Conduct. In a word, sock puppets are bad and insulting comments are disallowed.

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
First, a word of explanation about what we did in this thread:

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

Anyway, I'll reopen now.

Thank you for reopening.

I really hope you and the other moderators understand the more "carefully worded" frustration that is being vented here. I am extremely surprised anet is going back on their original statement of not handing out titles for S13. If titles were wrongly handed out, one would think you would remove them from those accounts and send them an error apology... Not decide to give everyone titles instead. I am extremely, extremely surprised with this decision

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
First, a word of explanation about what we did in this thread:

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

Anyway, I'll reopen now.

I hope that sticks... I did suggest this to you like a year ago, glad to see it finally gaining some traction.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
First, a word of explanation about what we did in this thread:

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

Anyway, I'll reopen now.

Thank you for reopening.

I really hope you and the other moderators understand the more "carefully worded" frustration that is being vented here. I am extremely surprised anet is going back on their original statement of not handing out titles for S13. If titles were wrongly handed out, one would think you would remove them from those accounts and send them an error apology... Not decide to give everyone titles instead. I am extremely, extremely surprised with this decision

[ Just to be clear. I don't think we're asking for careful wording so far as asking for wording that isn't overtly offensive, insulting, or made by someone applauding comments they made through another account. (Oh, and would you mind editing out your expletive using the name of a major religious figure? That would be very considerate of you, because some members are not going to be comfortable with it. Thanks for considering that.) ]

As to the topic at hand, I have no trouble seeing that this decision is controversial, and I do understand the opinions expressed. I don't know how or whether the process of title removal would work, but I know that the devs looked at all the options available to them before making their decision on this subject and this was the best outcome for this particular situation.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
First, a word of explanation about what we did in this thread:

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

Anyway, I'll reopen now.

Thank you for reopening.

I really hope you and the other moderators understand the more "carefully worded" frustration that is being vented here. I am extremely surprised anet is going back on their original statement of not handing out titles for S13. If titles were wrongly handed out, one would think you would remove them from those accounts and send them an error apology... Not decide to give everyone titles instead. I am extremely, extremely surprised with this decision

[ Just to be clear. I don't think we're asking for careful wording so far as asking for wording that isn't overtly offensive, insulting, or made by someone applauding comments they made through another account. (Oh, and would you mind editing out your expletive using the name of a major religious figure? That would be very considerate of you, because some members are not going to be comfortable with it. Thanks for considering that.) ]

As to the topic at hand, I have no trouble seeing that this decision is controversial, and I do understand the opinions expressed. I don't know how or whether the process of title removal would work, but I know that the devs looked at all the options available to them before making their decision on this subject and this was the best outcome for this particular situation.

Done - I just removed the religious figure reference. Sorry about that.

I don't agree with this decision. I feel like there has to be a way to edit the accounts in question and remove the titles. I'm not sure what would be the negative outcome of doing so. As a regular PvP player, I am flabbergasted that this is the decision the staff came to. I really hope they reconsider.

As someone who also PvPs a lot I can tell you it makes zero difference to my experience of the game. For context I already have relentless (top25), would I have pushed for top 10 or top 3 if I had known titles were going to be handed out as a result of this mistake? Nah. Realistically, I don't think many people would, or were capable of doing so.

It's an unfortunate occurance, and everyone complaining needs to look at what happened (an unfortunate oversight) and realise that it was a mistake, and that individually reverting each account would have been more complex than saying 'our mistake' and handing out titles for everyone else.

Done - I just removed the religious figure reference. Sorry about that.

I don't agree with this decision. I feel like there has to be a way to edit the accounts in question and remove the titles. I'm not sure what would be the negative outcome of doing so. As a regular PvP player, I am flabbergasted that this is the decision the staff came to. I really hope they reconsider.

[ I appreciate that. I get that most people wouldn't blink an eye, but you know, the whole "looking at the bigger picture thing" makes it better to alter the wording. ]

And yep, I get that you and other disagree with the decision. Rest assured the devs will be reading your thoughts.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:
First, a word of explanation about what we did in this thread:

Usually, when someone quotes an unacceptable comment -- you know, name-calling, insulting, sock-puppeting, etc. -- we remove the entire post. This means whatever the member wants to say about the quoted content gets tossed out, as well as the comment they quoted. This time, I wanted to try an experiment: We removed the quoted (unacceptable) comment but left the remarks of the person responding in place. We definitely lose some context by doing this, but it offered a way to not remove nearly every post in the thread. I'll read through the whole thread again, but I have a feeling that going through the process this time only reinforced why we have the system set up as we do. Seems best to continue to remove the post and ask the member to repost their thoughts without the quoted content.

Anyway, I'll reopen now.

I hope that sticks... I did suggest this to you like a year ago, glad to see it finally gaining some traction.

It took a bunch of time, and I really believe that the whole "what the heck? who are they talking to? what was the removed comment?" thing is very real. I handled this one to the best of my ability, but there's something to be said for not taking that amount of time, and not leaving a bunch of lingering questions from both the person whose post was edited (to remove the unacceptable comment), the person's who content was axed, and others in the thread who lose continuity. I'll keep an open mind on this, but even if we can adopt such a process, it will need to be very limited in scale and for the most part we'll remove without penalty and invite the person to repost without the quote. Thanks for the feedback, though!

Done - I just removed the religious figure reference. Sorry about that.

I don't agree with this decision. I feel like there has to be a way to edit the accounts in question and remove the titles. I'm not sure what would be the negative outcome of doing so. As a regular PvP player, I am flabbergasted that this is the decision the staff came to. I really hope they reconsider.

[ I appreciate that. I get that most people wouldn't blink an eye, but you know, the whole "looking at the bigger picture thing" makes it better to alter the wording. ]

And yep, I get that you and other disagree with the decision. Rest assured the devs will be reading your thoughts.

Thank you for your continued replies. It helps. I appreciate knowing they will be reading what I have to say as well.

Well considering you always go back on your words, this doesn't surprise me...
Happened countless times before
You should've removed the titles instead, many didn't bother with the pvp and now you spit in their faces. Way to go.
And I don't get why you always remove negative posts, seems to me like it's creating this "bubble" of positivity where everyone has to be fake and agree with whatever you guys do instead of allowing people to critique you, no wonder same mistakes are made when the critique never reaches the ears since it's instantly removed

This was the first PvP season I skipped ever, and it was because of the lack of titles(as there are no other prestige rewards, nothing to progress toward, nothing to achive). The entire season was spent waiting for the next one.... I won't lie, I find this decision extremely upsetting. Your company, your game, you do whatever you want with it of course... I just can't happily back those decisions like I used to.
It's just absurd that I got kittened over by believing the official announcement about removing titles. If whatever is communicated by official GW2 staff doesn't matter, what's the point of listening to what you guys have to say?

No one even tried this season because there was no incentive to play, me personally didn't bother. I don't care if players keep their titles, but I see where most are coming from. A "silver" player getting top 50 because no one cared nor played.

No incentive to play i.e "no titles" created a longer wait time I noticed last season than any other season.

At the risk of fanning flames, please keep in mind that the people who inadvertently got titles did not purposefully exploit anything. They simply opened the box later than usual. Currently, our only means of removing titles has very severe additional repercussions and is not something we do lightly.

We had 3 realistic options:
A) Ignore it and hope no one notices. Announce the mistake but not grant titles to anyone else on the leaderboard.
C) Announce the mistake and grant titles to everyone else who placed on the leaderboard, knowing that some segment of players would be understandably upset. We felt this was the most fair of the 3 options.

@MetalGirl.2370 said:
Well considering you always go back on your words, this doesn't surprise me...
Happened countless times before
You should've removed the titles instead, many didn't bother with the pvp and now you spit in their faces. Way to go.
And I don't get why you always remove negative posts, seems to me like it's creating this "bubble" of positivity where everyone has to be fake and agree with whatever you guys do instead of allowing people to critique you, no wonder same mistakes are made when the critique never reaches the ears since it's instantly removed

Can you honestly read this thread and say you believe we "remove negative posts?" It was clearly explained: Comments that were in breach of the FCoC were removed; comments that were posted by someone using a sock-puppet to agree with themselves were removed. Negative opinions are very visible here, just as they are visible throughout the forums. As long as they are written in a constructive way they are perfectly acceptable. In this context, "constructive" does not mean "positive." It means you can say you disagree with something, say why, even consider offering reasonable alternatives or suggestions, and it's all good. Even just saying simply that you disagree is fine. Making it personal, making it insulting -- that's where it crosses to unconstructive and unacceptable, not just here, but in almost any conversation. And that is what happened in the removed posts, and that, and that alone, is why they were removed.

Let's look at your post. You say we "always go back on our words." That it has "happened countless times before." When? Where? Give details and examples. Make your case, because right now, I see you throwing that out without backing it up, making it appear to be nothing more than a random, meaningless insult. Which means that your comments probably will be reported, and rightfully so, for not contributing anything of value to the conversation. Because, bottom line, the "critique" that you suggest we accept -- that we do accept several hundred times a day -- is not a critique if it devolves into insults, attacks, or rants. Critiques are more than welcome! The other... not so much.

In the end, if someone can't disagree without attacking, insulting, name-calling, or being completely unconstructive, their post will be assessed and it may be removed. But I will say this, with complete truthfulness, yet again: we do not "remove negative comments." The contents in this very thread -- and that of a thousand others -- proves what I am saying to be true.

Thanks for letting me make even clearer (I hope) how things work around here. If you or anyone has questions, I'm as close as a [email protected] e-mail address.

Now... I think we should keep this thread on the topic, and not on moderation policies, so let's do that.

Sadly titles in pvp never ment much past season4. Once the dawn of the wintraders came around with duos. Pvp became a game of who can out wintrade the others. Dancing around maps where they are |...........................................................| but the only part of the map that matters is |...|. Add titles or take em away. I'll stick to unranked till ranked isn't just a uncompetitive joke. Dancing in circles gets boring after a few games.

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:
At the risk of fanning flames, please keep in mind that the people who inadvertently got titles did not purposefully exploit anything. They simply opened the box later than usual. Currently, our only means of removing titles has very severe additional repercussions and is not something we do lightly.

We had 3 realistic options:
A) Ignore it and hope no one notices. Announce the mistake but not grant titles to anyone else on the leaderboard.
C) Announce the mistake and grant titles to everyone else who placed on the leaderboard, knowing that some segment of players would be understandably upset. We felt this was the most fair of the 3 options.

Can we get more visibility around what the repercussions would have been?

why is anet always have trouble on making decisions? at first you guys said that you will remove the titles and now you guys come with the excuse of " we apologize for the confusion" what confusion? The confusion of not knowing how to make decisions? what a shame this company.

you know the ammount of people who not played or did not even try hard this season just because you guys removed the tittles? lmao.

I don't see why are some people enraged that current titles were not "truly" earned because some people didn't compete without the promise of Title. If anything the people that are currently in Leaderboards competed even without any promise of "prestige" or reward (let's face it the potion was not a hype), they simply competed for sake of competing,... in my eyes that makes them worth of Titles more than anyone.

Also, I see many people here being really upset that Anet "backed away on their words" or "betrayed community", people, none of that happened, they did not back away from anything, this was simple and likely hardly predictable mistake, please stop making it look like they sat behind their desks entire Season with sinister look in their eyes and blood on their teeth, waiting for Season to end so they can "betray everyone".

There were many top players who didn't play this season due to the lack of rewards. This reduced competition for top spots significantly and made placing on the leaderboards a lot easier. As such, Anet's decision to hand out titles anyways means that there are going to be many players who don't necessarily deserve them.

There would be nothing controversial about removing the titles people gained on accident. After all, Anet had made it clear that they were removing them while testing duo que. Your decision to award them anyways is very, very unfair (and incorrect) in my opinion.

Usually, when something goes wrong (like the engi rifle 4 1500 range bug) those issues are corrected instead of being made a feature. However, I can see that Anet takes a more unconventional approach to these situations.

This is not a good decision. Many players either did not play this season or played the season a lot differently knowing that there would be 0 rewards at the end. PvP seasons are a completely different game when people know titles are on the line. Season 13 should be treated as every player perceived it as: null and void. For Anet to go back on their word does not reflect well on the company, which already has a bad image among the PvP/WvW player base.

If its simply not possible to revert the titles of those who accidentally got them, then it would be better to just leave it at that and don't distribute the rest. You can't deny that you made a mistake and the end of season process wasn't handled well. Fix it or swallow your pride and admit you made a mistake. Don't exacerbate the issue.

So what if some people refused to play because of lack of rewards? Be mad at youselves, dears, that's clearly on you.
Other people did play and even tried hard, despite that.

So, lesson learned: Always do your best, even if you can't immediately foresee a reward.

Also, that thing with the titles right now was not planned, but a mistake. I agree with the solution that handing out prizes for everyone (who would have earned them) is all in all better than taking them back. Psychology, I guess.

This is a very sad decision tbh. Anet says that titles will not be handed out for the season and then, AFTER THE SEASON HAS ENDED, they announce that it was all a lie and titles will be awarded anyway.
I believe very strongly that you should be rewarded for being good at the game and placing high on the leaderboard, but this just feels like we have been lied to by anet. If I knew titles would be given out this season, I would have pushed for top 1 to 3 for certain, as I would love to have one of those titles (getting bored of my top 10 one ) but the opportunity for this was taken away from me this season and I feel pretty sad about that.

Honestly I think the best option would be to just let the few lucky people have the titles they got from this season and leave it at that. At least that would feel more like an honest mistake than the betrayal it feels like now. Either way I know that anet will not go back on this decision, but I do think it’s important to give my feedback to hopefully influence future decisions.

@suffish.4150 said:
This is a very sad decision tbh. Anet says that titles will not be handed out for the season and then, AFTER THE SEASON HAS ENDED, they announce that it was all a lie and titles will be awarded anyway.
I believe very strongly that you should be rewarded for being good at the game and placing high on the leaderboard, but this just feels like we have been lied to by anet. If I knew titles would be given out this season, I would have pushed for top 1 to 3 for certain, as I would love to have one of those titles (getting bored of my top 10 one ) but the opportunity for this was taken away from me this season and I feel pretty sad about that.

Honestly I think the best option would be to just let the few lucky people have the titles they got from this season and leave it at that. At least that would feel more like an honest mistake than the betrayal it feels like now. Either way I know that anet will not go back on this decision, but I do think it’s important to give my feedback to hopefully influence future decisions.